The Kawasaki Concours C10 models are notorious for buzzing at freeway speeds. Seems like a perfect combination of de-tuning the Ninja 1000 engine, hard mounting both the engine and the exhaust to the frame, and setting up the powerband so that modern freeway speeds (with a 30 year old engine design) all conspire to put your hands to sleep in about 30 minutes. Add in California rain grooves, and I'm lucky to make it that long!
All kinds of suggestions exist on the interwebs and the Concours Owners' Group (COG) forum, magazine and tech tips. One of the weirder ones to me as an untrained mechanic is removing the bolts mounting the exhaust to the frame underneath the footpegs. To be honest, the buzz is so bad in my hands I hadn't paid attention to my feet until I read that. Next trip on the superslab, yep, now obsessing about foot buzz too! So I get out my t-handle wrench (great purchase btw) and the right side bolt comes right off. The heat shield on the exhause is even bent down for ease of access. So I move over to the left side. Of course, the problems now start multiplying.
First-nasty oil leak and grime makes doing anything on that side of the bike messy.
Second-look at the heat shield, no radiusing/indentation. Well let's just try to get the bolt out.
Third-two turns in and the wrench is hitting the heat shield. Switch to a different socket, no better. Could a box end wrench fit? Maybe, but would only turn 1/4 turn at a time and then the bolt would hit the heat shield.
So thank you yet again engineers who don't work on the bikes. Turn T-wrench around to the 8MM side and remove heat shield and boom the bolt is out. Then the fun of realigning the heat shield clamp (that has 88.75K miles of road grime and oil leak on it) and attaching front heat shield bolt. 2 minutes to remove exhaust bolt, 30+ minutes wrestling with heat shield removal and re-installation. GRRRRR.
Heading out on a dinner run to test out the buzz reduction! Have a great ride-
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